


I'm No Dick Grayson

by Moonlights_Inkwell



Series: Jason Todd fics [1]
Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, Nightwing (Comics), Red Hood and the Outlaws (Comics)
Genre: Arguing, Blood, Crying, F/M, I don't know if this classifies as angst, Insecurity, Jason isn't used to people unconditionally loving him, Jason's anger issues, M/M, Smoking, non sexual partial nudity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-17
Updated: 2018-06-17
Packaged: 2019-05-24 16:52:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,135
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14958429
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Moonlights_Inkwell/pseuds/Moonlights_Inkwell
Summary: Insecurities leads to relationship issues after Jason meets a few members of the Batfamily while on Patrol.





	I'm No Dick Grayson

When he climbs in through the window, the first thing that you notice that he doesn’t have his helmet on. It’s tucked under his arm, hidden slightly by his weathered leather jacket, and he’s scowling. Seeing as he just got back from patrol, you have to assume he’s met up with one of the members of his ‘family’ before he got home. Even on nights after scumbags have gotten the jump on him, the nights when he comes home with more scars than he left with- or even on the nights when he doesn’t manage to save someone, the nights when he’s forced to live with what he blamed the Bat for- he’s never as angry as he is after he’s met someone from the so-called Bat Family. His scowl is harsh, much harder than you’re used to seeing on him: jaw clenched, leaving deep ridges between closely drawn together eyebrows, the small spatter of freckles across his nose crinkled together into thin brown lines, and his eyes- sometimes blue and sometimes green- are narrowed into cat-like slits. If you didn’t know Jason better you’d be afraid that he’d hit you. He rakes his gloved fingers through the helmet-sweat-caused mess of his hair, mixing his black curls with that shock of white that runs through his bangs; when you walk towards him he flinches back from you, and you feel like a stranger to him. His anger is something that distances the two of you, and while you want to come to him you know that encroaching on his emotions would only serve to make him more distant. He seems like an animal, torn somewhere between fear and anger, terrified of being touched. When he throws his helmet at the couch, only to miss creating the kind of bang you’d associate with a gunshot, it makes you flinch and he curses loudly. It’s clear that he’s forgotten that it’s three-in-the-morning and that your tiny apartment has both neighbours and thin walls, leaving you dreading seeing your neighbours come morning on your walk to college. Somewhere in your mind, you can’t help but think that the helmet’s probably broken now; sending cracks through that wild ruby that you associate with the man you love. He’ll be pissed off when he realises it, but right now he’s contented enough just to curse once more under his breath before flopping down onto the couch himself, his hands covering his eyes.  
“…Jay-Jay?” You ask softly, standing at least a foot away from the couch worried about upsetting him any further, rubbing the back of your neck as you stand there in one of his old, oil-stained t-shirt and a pair of shorts. Your voice is soft enough that you worry he didn’t hear you until he pushes his hand away from his eyes a few seconds later to grunt in response. “…Are you okay?”  
“Yeah.” His voice is rough like he’s shouted himself hoarse, and his deft fingers push his fringe back until all of his foreheads is exposed only to curse as it falls back into his eyes. “Fuckin’… Stupid fuckin’ shit happened on patrol, don’t you worry your pretty little mind about it, Babe.” He finally looks up to you and smiles weakly- barely more than a slight upturn of his lips, that’s all it takes to encourage you over to him, climbing onto his lap and resting your head against his chest, smiling when his thick arms wind around your body protectively. His usual scent of cigarette smoke and blood had merged with something that smelled a lot more like a tire, making your nose crinkle. “Just fuckin’ Bat-shit-for-brains and his assholes.”  
“…What happened?” You whisper, turning your head to look up at him, but he avoids your eye, instead burrows his head in your hair, breathing in deeply. “Jay-”  
“…Leave it, Babe.” His short response makes you look down, and he presses his lips to your neck through your hair. “Bad night… What the Bat and his Golden Boy think doesn’t matter.” From that morose tone of voice, you know it matters to him. What Bruce thinks has always mattered to him; Jason spent years trying to be a perfect son, a perfect Robin, a perfect substitute for the 'Golden Boy’ who left before he was even adopted, and the fact that Jason would even pretend that he didn’t care was little more than meaningless words. You count yourself lucky in the fact that you never met the Bat (if you’re honest, years of living in Gotham City has left you mostly apathetic to Vigilantes who you don’t love, and growing up poor meant that you had little more than contempt for Billionaire Brucie Wayne), because if you had met him you’d have probably broken a limb trying to punch him. Letting your eyes slide across Jason’s features, you wonder how anyone could know Jason and still treat him the way the rest of the bats did; how anyone could see your selfless Jay- the boy with too many scars for his age, who killed criminals, the boy who clawed his way out of his own grave- as anything but Amazing. You wind your arms tightly around Jason’s neck and shiver, letting out a breathless sigh when he pulls you closer still, as if trying to make you too into one, like hugging you close would make sure you could never leave.  
“…Come on, Jay-Jay. Let's go to bed…” As soon as the words come out of your mouth, his arms slide under your knees and around your back, lifting you into a bridal carry and off to your bedroom; almost tripping over his helmet and some dropped clothes littered around the floor. It makes you cling tightly to him, which makes him sigh a little in relief which almost makes the possibility of falling worth it to you.  
When he finally drops you onto the bed, gently enough for you to do little but bounce half a centimetre off of the mattress while he begins pulling off his body armour, gloved fingers fumbling with his gun holsters in the darkness. Somewhere, in the back of your mind, you’re reminded of nights when he smiles as he strips, when his fingers dart under your clothes while he whispers into the crook of your neck, but right now you let out a gentle noise of concern and take his hands in yours to peel his gloves off before moving onto his gun holsters. It’s hard in the pitch black, but you can’t bring yourself to turn on the bedside lamp. You only look up from your difficulties when you hear him muttering to himself.  
“…Can’t even take off my own uniform.” His voice, hoarse and quiet, shakes before he finishes his sentence and follows it with a sharp inhale, trying to keep himself from crying. When you realise quite how sad he really is, you leave the job behind to pull Jason into a tight hug. “…Can’t do anything right.” He whispers. This insecurity is new to you.  
“…Jay…What happened tonight?” You ask softly, but he shakes his head and just lays beside you in his undershirt and briefs. After a few seconds of silence, he pulls the comforter around the two of you and hums a song, but in your half asleep and worried state you can’t quite place it. The humming lasts anywhere between a few seconds or a few hours before you drift off, wondering if the song was the Beatles or the Beach Boys. 

He’s distant for days after that, spending long periods of time on patrol-so long that you can’t keep yourself awake for when he arrives home, the only proof that he ever does is the body beside you when you wake up, turned in the other direction to you- and ignoring you in the brief minutes when he’s home when you’re home from college. He responds in non-descript grunts when he has to respond, nothing definitive and most definitely nothing resembling the words that you want to hear him say. The silence is probably worse than his anger. You understand Jason’s anger and always have been able to. You can judge when he needs to be alone when he needs you at his side when he needs distracting, but this… this is unintelligible to you. You can’t understand the silence. There’s nothing there to understand. Just the knowledge that he doesn’t quite trust you enough to let you in when you thought that maybe you had finally proved yourself to him. The apartment is cold and small like this, like a cage, or a jail cell.  
After four days of silence, you try to speak up, to draw attention to the uncomfortable silence that filled the apartment, but all it seemed to do was change the silence to unbearable shouting.  
“What do you want me to fucking say, huh?” Jason barks at you, eyes seeming to glow, while you flinch slightly and try to make yourself seem less terrified of confrontation than you are.  
“I just want to know what’s wrong!” You insist, voice nowhere near the same volume as Jason’s, trying as hard as you can to be cool and collected. It isn’t working. “I just want to help you, Jason!”  
“Well, you can’t!” He retorts sharply, shoving his hands up through his hair, so harshly you worry he’ll rip a hank of his own hair out. “I’m too fucked up for you to help, okay! I’m too fucked up! You… You deserve better than me! I mean look at me!” His loud ranting slipped down to a quiet sort of self-pity, as he gestures to his body as if the mere sight of him alone was disgusting. “…Look at me.” He whispers to you, eyes misting up. “…I’m no Dick Grayson.”  
Something inside of you snaps, making you feel a kind of anger that you aren’t at all used to. Anger swells in your stomach but aimed entirely at Bruce and his seeming favourite son not at all at Jason. Right now, it isn’t hard to imagine Jason as a young boy, crying in his Robin suit after Bruce had benched him; much smaller, with those curled bangs around his forehead and that traffic light coloured uniform, desperate to not be removed and replaced, wanting to prove himself to Bruce. You surge forward and cup Jason’s cheek. Tears slowly beaded out of the corner of his green eyes, and dripped off of the tanned skin of his cheeks and onto the palms of your hands, leaving tear tracks down your arms. His eyes meet yours, long eyelashes gathered together with tears, and you can see the fear behind the irises; terrified that you’re going to leave him, that he’s finally said the wrong thing, the kind of thing that can’t be unsaid and will be the end of a relationship.  
“…If I wanted Dick Grayson, I’d date Dick Grayson.” You say gently, fingertips wiping away the stray tears. “…But as it happens, I don’t want Dick Grayson. I want Jason Todd.” Jason looks confused at that.  
“…Why?” He whispers pathetically, so you press a soft kiss to the corner of his mouth to soothe him.  
“I love you Jason. You. You and your classical literature, your encyclopaedic knowledge of old music. I love you and your stupid menthol cigarettes, and the leather jacket. I love your eyes, and your courage, and your white stripe and your scars.” Your rambling is soft, and continues as you rub your thumbs across his face to wipe his quickly drying cheeks. “I love your freckles and your gun collection. I love how you spend all your night protecting people, how you do things that people like Dick Grayson can’t do.” He tilts his head, listening to you, enraptured. “I love how you smoke, and how you flip your guns, and how your nose crinkles while you laugh, and how you squint a little when you read-” As you paused to try to take a breath, Jason crashes his lips against yours, almost knocking his teeth against yours in his fervor to kiss you. It becomes chaste once your lips finally make contact with each other, a silent thank you. The kiss lasts anywhere between a second and a millennium, it makes you light headed enough for it to be impossible for you to tell. When he finally pulls back from your lips, he presses his forehead to yours and smiles weakly.  
“…You’re pretty great yourself.” He whispers and you gently push his chest.  
“…How about you tell me when something’s wrong? Not just push me away?” You ask him softly, twisting your fingers into his shirt.  
“Okay, Doll.” He mutters and his arms wound around your waist. You believe him.


End file.
